Women could be $740 a week worse off, according to Labor, if they switch from three days in the office to a three-day working week because of the policyPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastPeter Dutton has appeared to backtrack on plans to force federal public servants back into the office full time, instead saying the policy will only apply to Canberra-based workers.On Saturday, the Coalition leader tweaked the proposal his party had announced in early March, which would have required all members of the Australian public service (APS) work from the office five days a week. Continue reading…Women could be $740 a week worse off, according to Labor, if they switch from three days in the office to a three-day working week because of the policyPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastPeter Dutton has appeared to backtrack on plans to force federal public servants back into the office full time, instead saying the policy will only apply to Canberra-based workers.On Saturday, the Coalition leader tweaked the proposal his party had announced in early March, which would have required all members of the Australian public service (APS) work from the office five days a week. Continue reading…
Peter Dutton has appeared to backtrack on plans to force federal public servants back into the office full time, instead saying the policy will only apply to Canberra-based workers.
On Saturday, the Coalition leader tweaked the proposal his party had announced in early March, which would have required all members of the Australian public service (APS) work from the office five days a week.
“The policy doesn’t affect anybody except for public servants in Canberra,” Dutton told reporters in Darwin.
“I strongly support work from home. I’ve been very clear about that.”
Dutton said the policy would not have “any impact on the private sector” or on “the public sector outside of Canberra”.
So, what does this revised policy now look like and what led to the shift?
What has happened so far?
When the policy was first announced on 3 March, the shadow finance and public service minister, Jane Hume, said it applied to all public service workers.
“It will be an expectation of a Dutton Liberal government that all members of the Australian public service work from the office five days a week,” Hume told the Liberal-aligned Menzies Research Institute.
It coincided with the release of gender pay gap data by the public service minister, Katy Gallagher, that showed women earn on average $28,425 less than their male counterparts in the last year.
That only bolstered criticism from unions, who warned it could negatively impact workforce participation for those who rely on flexible working arrangements – particularly women, but also parents and carers, people with disabilities and chronic health conditions.
A little over a week later, Dutton softened the Coalition’s position, saying the Coalition was only advocating for a return to pre-pandemic levels of remote work, when only 20% of the workforce worked from home.
Then, on Saturday, he said it would only apply to APS workers in Canberra.
Why does Peter Dutton keep changing his tune?
Dutton’s comments on Saturday came after he was asked a question regarding new polling by the research group YouGov, which listed the Coalition’s work from home policy as one reason for a dip in his personal satisfaction ratings. (Another poll released on Saturday by Redbridge also blamed the policy for driving women back to Labor.)
Dutton accused the Labor campaign of spreading a “scare campaign” by suggesting the policy would impact women working in the private sector but some within the Coalition have previously warned the policy was not “fully thought-through” and could hurt them in seats with high numbers of working professional women.
They told Guardian Australia the policy was messaged poorly and had been misinterpreted by the public as affecting all workplaces – not just the public service.
Women are a key voting demographic the Coalition needs to win back, after many in metropolitan areas abandoned the Morrison government and turned to independents at the 2022 election.
How many people could be affected by the policy now?
There were around 185,000 public service employees in 2024, according to the Australian Public Service Commission. But only 64,435 – or 36.9% – of the total workforce is based in Canberra.
The remaining are spread across Australia, including 32,002 (17.3%) in Victoria, 30,712 (16.6%) in New South Wales and 24,180 (13%) in Queensland. About 12.3% of the workforce is located in regional areas across the country and 1,520 workers (0.8%) are overseas.
If Dutton keeps his word, it would mean only one-third of the total federal public service would be forced back into the office full time.
The Coalition campaign headquarters did not respond to a series of questions from Guardian Australia regarding why the policy is being limited to only Canberra-based public servants, how it would address potential inequities in workplace conditions for those workers and what steps it would take to ensure the mandate doesn’t disproportionately affect women, people with a disability or those with chronic health conditions.
What if someone in Canberra has flexible working arrangements?
Confusingly, Dutton on Saturday said that existing flexible work arrangements for Canberra-based public servants would remain unchanged, though it was unclear whether he was referring to formal or informal agreements.
“That flexibility continues, whether it is in Canberra or outside of Canberra,” Dutton said. “We are not proposing to change those and that’s the reality.”
Andrew Stewart, an employment expert and professor at the Queensland University of Technology, had previously warned that existing enterprise bargaining agreements would make it difficult for the Coalition to enforce a work from office policy.
“If there was a new blanket policy of saying no to these [flexible work] requests, it’s clearly foreseeable that you end up with cases in the Fair Work Commission and in the courts,” Stewart said.
What can public servants who don’t wish to return to the office do?
It’s unclear. But back in early March, when Dutton was asked whether the plan would disadvantage women, he said “it doesn’t discriminate against people on the basis of gender”.
He added that for women who could not be in the office five days a week, there were “plenty of job-sharing arrangements”.
What’s the latest reaction?
Unsurprisingly, Labor has come out swinging again. On Sunday night, the party released an analysis of publicly available data which showed if women were forced into job-sharing arrangements, they would be as much as $740 a week worse off.
The analysis assumed that women who were unable to work from home would switch to a three-day work week, with two days off. For an average woman currently earning $1,850 a week, this would result in a $740 reduction in gross pay. Over the course of a year, this would amount to a loss of $38,000.
Gallagher said women had “embraced flexible full-time work” since the start of the pandemic, which had resulted in economic participation rising and the gender pay gap falling.
“Peter Dutton’s outdated plan to end work from home will leave women thousands of dollars a year worse off,” she said.
Melissa Donnelly, the national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, accused Dutton of “making up policy on the run”.
“Just weeks ago, the Coalition launched an attack on working from home, trying to force all public servants back to the office five days a week. Now, after community backlash, Peter Dutton has decided your workplace rights should depend on your postcode,” she said.
“It is a bizarre and chaotic development that demonstrates how out of touch Dutton is with modern families and how they’re managing their lives.”